


Lost Canary Home to Roost

by Unusual_Raccoon



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: ...ever, Arrow (TV 2012) Season 7, Bisexual Laurel Lance, Black Siren redemption arc, F/F, F/M, Laurel centric, Laurel wants to be good but doesn't know how, Olicity never happened, it's better this way, my take on s07e18 "Lost Canary", sorry my summary sucks as per usual
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-05
Updated: 2020-04-05
Packaged: 2021-03-01 00:27:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,628
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23486035
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Unusual_Raccoon/pseuds/Unusual_Raccoon
Summary: Laurel comes to some realizations about herself in her time as Black Siren, and Oliver helps bring Laurel home.
Relationships: Earth-2 Laurel Lance/Oliver Queen, Earth-2 Laurel Lance/Shadow Thief
Comments: 24
Kudos: 16





	Lost Canary Home to Roost

**Author's Note:**

> Another spur of the moment fic. If this fic had to have a song go with it, it would definitely be Angela by the Lumineers.

Laurel wasn’t sure whether to feel happy or not, her dark lips quirked in a semblance of a prideful smile. She was the Black  _ fucking  _ Siren, and she wouldn’t be swayed by the pleas of her supposed allies. She was a criminal, they couldn’t fix her, not that she wanted them to. She liked being bad, she was good at it.

She had blown them all away with a cry, like flies in the wind, and they disappeared to lick their wounds or something like it. They might as well have thrown their hands up in defeat and declared her a lost cause. She was too much work and she knew it.

To their credit they all tried to persuade her to see the light, Felicity and her insistent whining, and Dinah’s big hopeful hazel eyes, or her doppelganger’s sister’s cold unflinching judgement. No, none of them had succeeded in forcing her into the mold of someone she wasn’t.

She wasn’t a hero. Laurel had been one of Zoom’s top lieutenants, she had stood beside Adrian Chase when he burned Lian Yu to nothing more than a bad memory, she had been associated with the likes of Cayden James and Ricardo Diaz. She hadn’t gained a resume so colorful by being good.

Laurel wasn’t afraid of much anymore, she wasn’t lonely either, not with Shadow Thief back in her life...and her bed. She traded in her sparkling make believe life as Laurel Lance district attorney for her reality - Laurel Lance would always be the Black Siren.

There was one thing that bothered her, that  _ haunted  _ her even… it was him. Somehow she knew she wouldn’t be able to escape the shell of a life she’d been living unscathed. She kept waiting with baited breath at each heist that she might catch a glimpse of a green hood or the twisted shadow of a bow, or maybe even the whistle of an arrow cutting through the air. Laurel wasn’t waiting for him to save her or anything silly like that, she didn’t want to be saved and if she did, and even if she did, she wouldn’t want him to do it. It was just if everyone else had written her off, didn’t that mean he would too?

Even as she was swallowed up in the cover of night, Aviva’s wild curls tickling her cheek where they lay in bed, she remembered what Oliver had said to her long ago.

_ Face the darkness… _

And just as clearly she recalled her question after that...

_ How does that work? _

Laurel had never quite gotten the answer she wanted, even after all this time playing pretend she hadn’t figured out how to face her darkness. Truth be told everyone around her shrank away from her dark past, they swept it under the rug like it had never existed. She was a district attorney...like that was supposed to fix everything.

But not Oliver, he didn’t cower at the first sight of her troubled life, because the same dark cloud that loomed over him followed her. That inescapable cloud that filled her lungs and tasted of ashes, it poisoned her every breath, and Laurel wondered how long it would take for this poisonous life to kill her.

Aviva didn’t understand, to her being bad was fun, and being bad  _ together _ was even more fun...and for a time Laurel believed it. The mercenary jobs, the theft, the sex was entertaining, until it wasn’t. The initial high wore off and soon she was left with more unanswered questions.

_ Was this who she was? Would Quentin still be proud of her? Is this all she could be? _

These questions, like most of her other ones, went unanswered.

Shadow Thief was a relatively private person when it came to work and the safe house they had in Star City was hard to find, even for a native like Laurel, yet a part of her hoped she could still be found. A piece of her clung to some distant prayer that despite her seclusion someone might still pull her out of the darkness.

Laurel was hunched over the sink in the bathroom, her hands braced on either side of the porcelain. Staring at herself in the mirror, her signature black lipstick was smudged across her mouth that resulted when she and Aviva had traded a sloppy, adrenaline fueled kiss. The stench of death hung around her in a sour toxic smog, Black Siren and Shadow Thief had just finished a heist overseas. Well, needless to say her partner hadn’t been too concerned with sparing any lives of people who got in the way of them and their paycheck.

The water ran hot as she scrubbed weakly at her hands, no amount of soap and water could make her feel clean. Eventually a shaking hand shut off the water, her knuckles turned white where she gripped the rusted water tap. Without thinking she brought her fist up, sharp and hard shattering the glass of the mirror. Shards rained down into the mouth of the sink, the skin of her knuckles split and blood wept from the wounds. Crimson flowed freely, creating sticky trails between her fingers and gathering beneath her nails.

Laurel wheezed out a shaky breath as she heard a creak in the floorboards, far too deliberate to be an accident.   
  


Turning to lean back against the sink, she swallowed back her surprise when she saw  _ him _ . Oliver was standing there, no bow, no hood, no judgement. His head was tilted sweetly to the side as he fixed her with those pretty blue eyes. His hands were in his pockets as he stared at her. Star City’s golden boy, their idol, though if she looked hard enough she could see the tarnish and ugly chips in the beautiful facade.

“How did you find me?” Laurel asked eventually and the brief silence following her question was filled with the incessant  _ drip drip drip _ of blood trickling down to adorn the tiles of the bathroom floor in bright red splashes.

“I was patient.” Oliver said with a little lift of his shoulders.

Laurel shrugged back, folding her arms as she stared at him, she ignored the blood where it smeared from hand to her forearm.

“Well,” Laurel said, “What are you doing here?” She sounded impatient and cold, just cold enough to make her distaste of his presence convincing.

“I came to see you.” Oliver said back gently, he took a step closer and Laurel sucked in a nervous breath. She let out an unamused scoff as he neared her, despite the way her body longed to lean into him, into his warmth, into his understanding.

“What for, so you can save me?” Laurel asked with an icy chuckle, “Do you think because we fucked a couple of times, that you know me?”

A brief quiet hung in the air and Oliver’s expression turned to something warm, not like the pity she received from her pseudo-sister Sara or the disappointment she’d gotten from Dinah, no Oliver looked at her with understanding - and that scared her more than anything.

“Well, you don’t know anything, okay? This, this is who I am.” Laurel insisted, though her belief in her own words was wavering. Oliver took another step closer, crowding into her personal space and she pretended to hate it. He gently took a hold of her hand that was now sticky with blood, his fingers brushed away the small shards of glass, busying himself with that. With Oliver so close it was hard for her not to think of the times they had shared together, a sticky romp in a hotel room, a hungry tryst on a rooftop, gentler moments where he’d coax her into something purring and warm and he’d give her that smile, the kind that reached his eyes, a smile that he reserved for her.

One hand seized her shoulder gently while the other kept a grip on her wrist, despite all her tough talk Laurel allowed Oliver to steer her to his liking. Before long she was facing the mirror she had just broken, blood and glass splashed over the vanity of the sink. She could feel Oliver’s breath against her neck.

“Tell her that.” He said simply, pointing to her distorted reflection, the large crack like a flash of lightning caused a ripple in what was left of the glass.

“Don’t convince me,” He continued, his warm palm kneading the muscle of her shoulder through the strap of her tank top, “Convince  _ her _ that this is who you are.”

Laurel stared at what was left of her reflection, her chin wobbled as she tried to swallow back some emotion that she didn’t want to identify. This wasn’t what she wanted to be, she was so tired of being Black Siren. Laurel finally choked back a heavy sob as she leaned back into Oliver. Unlike everyone else who denied her her darkness, tried to get her to turn over a new leaf, Oliver embraced her for who she was. He unabashedly stepped into that darkness with her. Their relationship might not have been perfect or  _ normal _ , but he tried.

Growing up Laurel remembered hearing some sentimental statement something like, ‘be with someone who makes you a better person’. Oliver didn’t necessarily make her better, but his faith in her gave her faith in her - which is something she had been lacking for quite some time.

“Come home.” Oliver whispered, it wasn’t a command or a threat perhaps like those she had received from all the others, it was a request, he wanted what she wanted.

“I-” Laurel began, sucking in a breath when she recalled where they were - in a safehouse she shared with her villainous mercenary girlfriend...who was bound to come back at any moment. The last thing Laurel needed was for Oliver to get a knife in the back courtesy of her business partner and lover. Aviva was wrapping up a new contract for them, or at least that’s what she had told Laurel.

Laurel felt a curl of regret spiral in her stomach at the thought of her partner, she had never meant to lead things on to this point. Reconnecting had been fun, sure, but now she was coming to the realization that things that had brought them together in the first place were no longer things she enjoyed.

“Viv, uh, Shadow Thief is-”

“Being escorted by undercover Argus agents to a blacksite where she will be arrested and dealt with.” Oliver said and Laurel found herself falling silent at the imparted information.

“Argus?” Laurel echoed gently, finding herself turning to press her chest to his, and Oliver didn’t object.

“Yeah.”

“What kind of strings did you have to pull for that?” Laurel asked in return, peering into his blue eyes to gauge his reaction. From what she understood Oliver Queen and Argus had a dark twisted history. He stared back at her for a moment and delightfully one of those rare smiles made an appearance, creasing the corner of his eyes and making him light up.

“The kinds of strings I would gladly pull again, for you.”

\--

They were riding the elevator down into the bunker and Laurel couldn’t help but pick nervously at the bandages around her dominant hand. Oliver had been insistent upon cleaning and wrapping the wounds, and Laurel let him.

To say she was nervous was putting it mildly, she was entering a room of people she had attacked not long ago. They were no longer incessant flies, now they were snarling wolves and she felt like a lamb being dragged to slaughter. Oliver made assurances that things were okay, that she would be  _ okay _ and she trusted him.

The doors to the elevator slid open and Laurel was suddenly face to face with the three women who had tried to set her straight. She tried thinking of an apology on the way over, tried to justify her actions, though at the sight of all of them, her brain just sort of shut off.

Felicity was the first to break the silence, the blonde was up and out of her chair throwing herself onto Laurel in a hug.

“I knew it! I knew you’d come back.”

Laurel gave a little chuckle and an equally stilted pat to the computer whiz’s back. Felicity whipped her head around to give a hard stare at the other two and Sara begrudgingly came in too.

“Proud of you, kid.” She said with a squeeze to Laurel’s shoulder and that signature dimpled smirk that nearly had Felicity drooling.

Dinah was the last to join the small welcome wagon, but did so with a raised brow and an outstretched hand.

“Good to have you back...Counsellor.”

Laurel gave a little snort and returned the handshake, “It’s good to be back, Captain.”

They were all eager to rejoice in her return and Laurel found herself enjoying the warm welcome along with frilly little flutes of champagne. Laurel wasn’t so far gone in the revelry that she didn’t notice Oliver shrink back to allow her to bask in the support of her friends.

As much fun as she was having, Laurel did still feel a pang of loss when Oliver inched away from the group and made a move back towards the elevator. She turned her head, watching as he went. Turning back to the three smirking faces of the three women around her.

“What?” Laurel asked innocently before sipping at her champagne. Laurel flinched at the sound of the elevator doors opening, he was really going to leave after all of this?

Turning as she watched him step into the elevator, he gave a gentle smile to her from a distance. Turning back towards her friends, she was met once again with their smiling faces.

“Would you mind if I skipped out on the toasts and all that a little early?” Laurel asked, trying to skirt around blatantly asking to leave after all the shit she had pulled.

“Yes! Yes!” Felicity said rather loud, smothering a buzzed giggle against Sara’s shoulder.

“We’re about ready to kick you out, you have been giving him puppy eyes since you got here.” Dinah chimed in with an easy smile on her lips where she leaned against Felicity’s desk.

Sara made a waving motion with her hand, “Go, go, please, Oliver has been insufferable since you were gone.”

Laurel let out a little laugh as she stared at the three of them and their encouraging smiles.

“I - thank you.” Laurel said before turning to head back up the stairs they had put in the bunker in the event they lost power. As she went she distantly heard giggles from the girls.

“Use protection!” She heard Sara shout with a laugh as Laurel climbed the stairs two at a time.

The stairs led to a little tucked away exit that emerged into a smokey alleyway. By some stroke of luck Oliver was just emerging from the bunker’s front entrance.

“Ollie!” Laurel called, trying to ignore the bubble of nervousness in her belly as he gave her a gentle smile.

“Shouldn’t you be enjoying the celebration downstairs?” He asked while fishing his car key from his pocket. Laurel crossed the short distance to him, her bandaged hand coming to rest up on his shoulder.

“Actually, I was hoping we could celebrate...together.”

Oliver went silent and the cute creases on his forehead made in appearance as his eyebrows shot up. To his credit though, Oliver recovered quickly, his hand came up to tenderly cup her cheek, which was a touch Laurel found herself sinking into.

“Yeah,” He said, stroking his fingers across her cheek, “Let’s go home, Pretty Bird.”

**Author's Note:**

> So, I think I enjoyed the Lost Canary episode in season 7, seeing as how trashed Laurel and Oliver's relationship was at that point. This being said, I think I would've preferred something like this where Laurel comes to the realizations about who she wants to be without Felicity or anyone else telling her who she should be.
> 
> If you enjoyed this fic, please leave a comment, I love to hear what my readers think.


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